L.A. influencer-only mural revealed to be go90 marketing stunt

Los Angeles is known for its thriving art scene, and streetside murals are certainly no rarity. But when one mural appeared on Melrose Avenue, featuring a guard and a sign that required you have at least 20,000 followers to take a photo, it made news headlines all over the country.

There’s a new security-guarded mural in LA that only allows influencers and verifieds to take pics in front of it. pic.twitter.com/PDlLJ9C0DI

It turns out the mural was actually a publicity stunt to promote go90’s upcoming new series, Like and Subscribe, which the Hollywood Reporter describes as “a satire about influencers and the Hollywood types who have helped them find internet fame.”

Jack Wagner, the man behind the mural and a producer of the go90 series, was seen wandering the mostly-empty parking lot the morning after the mural went up. “I’m honestly surprised it didn’t get destroyed last night,” Wagner said.

“It is a very strange phenomenon when you see all these people literally traveling to take a picture in front of these murals in L.A.,” he said. “So I thought, ‘what if there was a more exclusive, rare mural for people to Instagram? It could show a true level of status.’This mural really just showcases that you’re on a different echelon.”

Like and Subscribe will feature EDM artist Dillon Francis as a talent manager, comedian Brandon Wardell, and former SNL player John Milhiser.

“Writing a satire about influencer culture and social media was way harder than I thought,” Wagner told The Hollywood Reporter. “I would write a scene that I thought would be so ridiculous and absurd and then a couple weeks later, it would happen in real life.”

And as for the stunt? It was just “meant to be entertainment for everybody,” he said, noting that it wasn’t meant to be taken seriously. “We gotta do what we gotta do to get people to talk about the show.”